codeplex.org: Our contribution agreement. This serves as a template for how companies or individuals may make intellectual property cntributions[sic] to the Foundation.
If Microsoft’s goal was to be at arm’s length, I would have recommended that they follow Eclipse’s or Apache’s model. Copyright assignment may provide benefits down the road, and can work for obviously independent organizations like the FSF, but in this case I’m concerned that this may prevent a successful and sustainable bootstrap.
Update: Sam Ramji is leaving Microsoft. I did’t see that one coming.
Unless I’m reading things wrong, that’s not a copyright assignment, but a license agreement ("You grant Foundation a [...] license in the Submission to[...] distribute the Submission and such derivative works [...]"). IANAL, but it reads pretty similarly to the ASF’s CLA, which is widely used. So what’s the problem?
The CodePlex Foundation actually provides templates for how companies and individuals can either assign or license contributions to the foundation. [link]
Both options are available for potential contributors to consider.
Both options are available for potential contributors to consider.
As long as it is the contributor and not the project that decides, I guess there is no issue, but I have to ask: how common is it for potential contributors to prefer to assign vs license (and retain) rights?
I suspect one of the reasons for the dual licensing is to please the 2 political wings FSF (AKA the copylefts, free software as a weapon for people against greater powers) and Open Source (AKA the BSD’s, open source as a way to improve the quality of software everywhere, including proprietary software).
Another and often more important reason is money and practicallity on the commercial market. Customers have different political stands and traditions, and would like to pick what suits them best, not unlike how one self would like to pick one’s software tools.
If we were to judge by the volume of press inquiries yesterday, the announcement of the CodePlex foundation is Big News. Big B, capital N. Maybe it’s an artifact of Microsoft’s checkered history with open source, maybe it’s the personnel movements...
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